“So I’ve been told.” I pulled up a chair and faced her across the piecrust table. “I have this idea about people who live with enormous wealth and great position-that because they get exactly what they want when and how they want it, they believe they’re entitled to privilege. And I imagine such people think the rest of us exist only at their pleasure. That means it’s all right to summon us in the middle of the night, or lie to us, or do whatever else takes their fancy at the moment, because to them our lives have no existence away from their orbit.”
I heard a gasp in the background and realized the maid was listening. Geraldine Graham herself produced a blistering look from her clouded eyes. “Do you truly imagine, young woman, that I have had exactly what I wanted when and how I wanted it? If so, you have shockingly little understanding of family life.”
I was startled: I had braced myself for a diatribe that would end with her ordering Darraugh never to work with me again. Now I remembered the unhappy faces in the newspaper photos of her wedding.
“Your parents bullied you into marrying MacKenzie Graham,” I said calmly. “You didn’t feel able to stand up to them.”
Her lips trembled with more than the uncertainty of old age. “My mother was not the kind of person one stood up to easily”
I looked at the frosty blue eyes in the portrait behind her head. They could have wilted ferns in the Amazon.
“You and your husband didn’t want to start a life together in a house away from your mother? Was Larchmont that important to you?” Geraldine Graham paused. When she spoke again, it was more to herself than to me. “My husband and I had so little in common that it was easier for us to stay with Mother than to try to live alone someplace else.”
“Do you keep her portrait up there to remind yourself every day that she humiliated you?” I asked.
“You are impertinent, young woman,” Geraldine Graham repeated, but this time with a touch of wry humor. “You may pour me more coffee before you leave. Rinse the cup with hot water first,” she added, as I picked up the coffeepot.
I looked at her through narrowed eyes: what she wanted when she wanted it. Before I pushed my luck by uttering the thought aloud, Lisa bustled around the corner into the room and took the cup from me. She poured hot water from a small pot into the cup, swirled it, and emptied the slop into a bowl before refilling Geraldine’s cup.
Ignoring Geraldine’s implied command to leave, I refilled my own cup-without going through the rinse cycle-and leaned against the sideboard. “I’m still trying to figure out what brought Marcus Whitby to New Solway. I thought he might have gone to see Calvin Bayard, not realizing how ill Mr. Bayard is.”
Her hand stopped with the cup midway to her lips. “How ill is he? Renee has discouraged visitors.”
“He seems to have Alzheimer’s. He knows who he is, but not who he’s talking to.”
“Alzheimer’s,” Geraldine repeated slowly. “So the neighborhood gossip has been correct, for once.”
“Why would Ms. Bayard keep his condition so secret?” I asked.
“With Renee Bayard, one never knows why she does what she does, but it is always safe to assume she is enjoying her power over all our lives-over Calvin’s, in keeping him locked away-over his old friends, keeping us from visiting-probably over all the employees at the publishing company.” She pressed her lips together in resentment.
“Calvin and I were friends from earliest childhood, and she has kept me from him most successfully all these years. So if your Negro writer was hoping to see Calvin, Renee would have made sure he wasn’t able to do so. Why do you imagine your Negro wanted to talk to Calvin?”
I recited my piece on Whitby’s interest in Kylie Ballantine and her contract with Bayard. To my surprise, Geraldine knew Ballantine.
“Calvin took an interest in her work. When he was enthusiastic, he wanted everyone to share his interests, so we all drove into the city to watch her dance. He bought art from her and we all had to follow his lead and buy one of her African masks. When she gave a recital, we all drove to the city to watch her dance. In 1957, 1 think it was, or perhaps ‘fifty-eight. He had just brought Renee out here, I remember. I was prepared to feel sorry for her, a little patronizing toward her, twenty-year-old bride of an older, domineering man. What a mistake that was!”
She made a bitter face. “Ballantine was in her fifties the night I saw her, but she still moved like a young woman. I didn’t care much for the dance. It was African, and I’ve never cared greatly for African art or music: it all sounds like boomlay, boom! to me. But heaven lent her enough grace for me to admire past the sound.”
“It’s a pity Mr. Whitby didn’t have a chance to talk to you.” I returned to my seat. “He might have found your recollections useful. Had Ballantine been blacklisted during the McCarthy hearings? Was that what brought her to Mr. Bayard’s attention?”
Geraldine Graham slowly shook her head. “I don’t know, young woman. It was about that time that my husband died, and Mother and Darraugh were-I remember the evening at the ballet because it was vivid, but much else that year is gray in my mind.”